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Whether you prefer Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram, sharing fun content and important updates through social media is an essential part of a great online marketing plan.

When you share updates about where your truck is going next or pictures of the latest addition to your menu, you’re not just helping customers decide whether or not to visit—you’re also forging a human connection that’s authentic and likeable, which gives people the opportunity to believe in you and join your community.

Each tweet you send is a chance for your customers to get to know your unique attitude and your brand’s personality. And every photo on Instagram invites your followers to salivate over your delicious dishes and see the smiling faces of your team. Most importantly, an active social media presence shows your customers how much you love making them happy by serving amazing food. Social media allows you to have a real relationship with your customers built on shared interests, not

WHY SOCIAL MEDIA MATTERS TO FOOD TRUCK OWNERS

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just transactions. Your fans will love you for your good value, great service, and friendship. That’ll keep them coming back for more—and in many cases, bringing friends.

But for all the good that social media can bring, beware its lure. While you could easily spend your entire day managing various social media accounts, you still have an entire business to run—so you need a way to make social media management simple and efficient. Thankfully, there are a few key strategies (and six awesome tools!) you can use to effectively manage your social media accounts while staying sane and running the other aspects of your business. First up is scheduling posts in advance.

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The beauty of platforms like Twitter and Facebook is that you can reach your audience instantaneously. The drawback, however, is that it’s easy to feel pressured to update your accounts and talk to followers all the time. That can drive anyone mad, especially food truck owners like you with so many other priorities on your mind. The cure to this madness is to become something of a social media ninja by scheduling your posts in advance.

THE STRATEGYUse a tool to schedule some of your status updates ahead of time so that you can focus on other tasks during the day.

HOW TO USE ITThink about the week’s menu, upcoming specials, or events you’re planning to attend and write posts ahead of time. Here’s a sample of some posts that can be planned in advance and scheduled to save time:

• 9:30 a.m.: 90mins til burger time! Today’s special: caramelized onion/apple/brie turkey burgers. Regular customer @PatFlynn suggested this tasty combo!

• 11:00 a.m.: It’s 11:00 a.m., do you know where your lunch is? Oh yeah, on the corner of 9th & State Street! We’ve got some fries with your name on them!

SCHEDULING POSTS IN ADVANCE

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• 2:30 p.m.: It’s the best time of day—half price cookie time! How can you say no to cookies like these?

• 4:00 p.m.: We’ll see you this weekend at the Washington County Fair! Look for us next to the Ferris wheel!

Scheduling posts in advance alleviates some of the pressure you may feel to get updates out throughout the day. You can still add posts to let people know what’s happening—and we encourage it!—but you won’t have the burden of remembering to send out a tweet while an entire line of hungry patrons watches.

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When it comes to tools for scheduling posts in advance, there are two frontrunners: Buffer and Hootsuite. We love both tools at FoodTruckr because each platform offers its own unique benefits.

1. BUFFERThe best part of Buffer is its clean, easy-to-use interface. While it has fewer options than Hootsuite, Buffer is easier to navigate. To get started, connect your social media accounts to Buffer and set a daily posting schedule. From this point forward, Buffer acts like a funnel. Once a day, you’ll go into Buffer and fill it up with status updates. The updates will automatically go out in the order they were added based on your set schedule.

• Platforms currently supported: Twitter, Facebook (including Pages), LinkedIn (including Groups), Google+, and App.net

• Automated schedules: Yes

• Mobile apps available for: Android, iPhone, iPad, and Blackberry

• Price: Free plan allows up to 10 scheduled posts on one account per social network; $10/month for unlimited posts on 12 profiles (and access for two additional team members)

Click here to check out Buffer

THE SCHEDULING TOOLS THAT MAKE IT WORK

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2. HOOTSUITEHootsuite is the perfect choice if you want to add Foursquare into your social media mix. The tool supports a number of social platforms and allows you to schedule posts, respond to comments, see who is mentioning your brand, and much more.

• Platforms currently supported: Twitter, Facebook (including Pages and Groups), LinkedIn (including Company Pages and Groups), Google+, Foursquare, and other apps

• Automated schedules: Yes

• Mobile apps available for: Android, iPhone, and iPad

• Price: Free plan allows up to five social profiles; Pro account starts at $8.99/month and allows 50 social profiles with one team member (additional team members may be added at an extra cost)

Click here to check out Hootsuite

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Whether you choose Buffer or Hootsuite to run your scheduled posts, you’ll still need to create a posting schedule. Your goal is to set your updates to post right when your followers are most likely to be checking their feeds—but how do you know what the most optimal times are?

THE STRATEGYGet to know your customers.

HOW TO USE ITThough you shouldn’t become overly obsessed with analyzing any single metric, it’s important to spend a bit of time thinking about your customers when you are trying to set your posting schedule. Ask yourself the following questions to gain insight into your ideal customer’s behavior:

• When do your customers start thinking about food? If you serve a downtown lunch crowd, 10:00 a.m. might be just the right time to post, as your ideal customer is taking his or her morning coffee break and browsing social media.

• How much time do your customers need to get to your location? If your truck is outside of a busy office park, a lunchtime tweet letting workers know what specials are available just downstairs may bring more people to your line. If you’re in an area where people may need to travel 10-30 minutes to reach you, schedule social media posts announcing your location far enough in advance of lunch that customers can make plans to hit your truck.

TIMING YOUR UPDATES

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• When do people want to know about your specials? If you’re running a group discount on Friday, announce it on Thursday so that customers can plan ahead to pick up lunch for a group of coworkers. Similarly, let people know ahead of time if you’re going to be at a special event or location other than your normal spot so that everyone knows exactly where to find you.

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Considering your ideal customer’s behavior is a great way to create your posting schedule initially, but you should collect data and refine your strategy over time to optimize your results. There are some excellent tools available to help you time your Twitter and Facebook status updates effectively. Just as you use a combination of spices to get the tasty sauce your truck is known for, we recommend using a combination of timing tools to get the deepest insights into your customers and their behavior.

3. TWERIODAs the name suggests, Tweriod is a tool for Twitter that helps you determine the times of day when your followers are most active. In just one hour, the free version of Tweriod analyzes the tweets of up to 1,000 of your followers and lets you know what times of day they are most active. The paid version gives you insight for up to 5,000 followers.

Use the Tweriod analysis as a guide when you create your posting schedule.

Click here to check out Tweriod

THE TIMING TOOLS THAT MAKE IT WORK

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4. FACEBOOK PAGE INSIGHTSInsights, a tool that lets you view how many of your Facebook fans saw each post, is built right into your Facebook Page. You can also use the tool to check out how many people are looking at your page each day, monitor when new people “like” your page, and find some demographic data for the people who are interacting with you on Facebook.

Pay attention to your exposure over time and look for patterns. If early morning posts usually get more views than those in the late afternoon, consider matching your most important updates to that time of day. Experiment by making small tweaks to your strategy—just as you would adjust the seasoning on your French fries until they come out perfectly.

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Up to this point, we’ve covered tools that make it easier for you to talk to your friends and followers. However, social media is just as much—if not more so—about listening as it is about talking.

THE STRATEGYUse hashtags to see what people are talking about, join conversations, and offer helpful tips to potential customers.

HOW TO USE ITHashtags (the # symbol followed by a word or phrase with no spaces, such as #foodtruck, #MNStateFair, or #WDS2013) are an incredibly useful way to find conversations—especially those centered around a special event like a street fair or festival. Though Twitter made the use of hashtags popular, you’ll see them used similarly in most social networks, including Instagram, Vine, and Facebook. In most cases, clicking on the hashtag takes you to all the messages that include that tag.

Why should you search hashtags? First of all, they’re an easy way to see what everyone talking about a particular event has to say—but more importantly, hashtags give you a chance to join the conversation.

Let’s use #uptownartfair as an example and consider how you can use hashtags to connect with customers:

MONITORING HASHTAGS

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• Before the event: Perhaps you see in a tweet or Facebook post that a local food blogger is planning to attend the art fair. You can personally invite her to stop by your truck to try out your newest menu item.

• During the event: You see a tweet asking, “Does anyone know where to get a gluten-free lunch at #uptownartfair?” You can respond to that user, “@GFFan We have gluten-free! Find us on Lake St. next to the info booth!”

• After the event: Later that week, search the hashtag on Instagram for pictures. Post nice “Thanks for visiting us!” comments on any pictures of your booth or your food.

• For an event you didn’t attend: Read the updates to get a sense of whether or not the event is worth attending in the future. If you see lots of complaints about long food lines, next year’s event might be a great opportunity. Or maybe you see tweets from other vendors indicating that the event was sparsely attended—now you know to cross it off the list for next year.

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Great! But how do you find hashtags to follow? And how do you follow them in real time? Let’s examine two tools to make your life a bit easier. Twubs and Tagboard are two web tools to help you follow updates to hashtags as they happen.

5. TWUBSTwubs specifically searches Twitter. Simply type the hashtag into the search box. If you don’t know what the hashtag for an event is, start typing what you think it would be, and Twubs’s auto-complete feature will make suggestions.

From Twubs, you can follow along with tweets in real time, view posted photos, and see a grid of all the Twitter users actively using the hashtag. When you connect your account, you can also tweet directly from Twubs.

Click here to check out Twubs

THE HASHTAG TOOLS THAT MAKE IT WORK

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6. TAGBOARDTagboard allows you to follow one hashtag across multiple platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, App.net, Vine, and Google+. The web interface has a beautiful, easy-to-navigate design—and when you create an account, you can even save your searches for future social media use. This tool makes it easy for you to follow and join conversations no matter where they’re happening.

Click here to check out Tagboard

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Social media offers thousands of opportunities to connect with your customers—and engaging with your fans and learning about their behavior can become addicting quickly. Try not to get too overwhelmed analyzing data and planning perfectly worded posts each day.

Instead, try these tools one at a time to figure out which platform is the most effective for your food truck business. A lot of that experimenting has to do with figuring out which medium matches your food truck’s brand identity and personality. For social media to be effective, it must be authentic. Never force yourself to use a social media platform you don’t like. Have fun with social media! If you have fun, your fans and followers will, too.

Refine your strategy as you go to see which tools and types of posts get the most attention from your customers. Like all relationships, social media relationships require thoughtful care and attention. Stay open-minded and be responsive.

In the end, being yourself is the most important thing you can do on social media. Show your customers who you are and what your food truck’s all about—and you’ll easily find likeminded people who are eager to share your passion for delicious food.

THE BOTTOM LINE

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Thanks for joining the FoodTruckr community! We’re so happy you’re here.

Stay tuned to our newsletter to get more updates on the best strategies to attract customers, the tools you need to manage your business, private stories with truck owners who are marketing their businesses in creative and exciting ways, and much more.

THANKS SO MUCH! THERE’S MORE TO COME!

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At FoodTruckr, our mission is to help food truck owners like you build a thriving business that brings you endless joy and supports your ideal lifestyle. We can do a lot ourselves—but if we work together, we can achieve so much more.

So if you know fellow food truck owners hungry to grow their businesses, would you please let them know about FoodTruckr.com? We’d be so grateful.

Invite them to join our newsletter just as you have. It’s the best way to access the tastiest marketing and business advice and stay connected with our community. We’re in this together. Let’s make some magic happen!

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